Beaver football looks to maintain last season’s success ahead of the 2023 football season

By RYAN HARLAN Sports Writer

While the start of the 2023 college football season is just over six months away, the Oregon State football team has kicked off their offseason with spring football practices after the team finished the 2022 season with a 10-3 record and a SRS Las Vegas Bowl victory.

Now, the Beavers are tasked with building upon that success for the season ahead. But with the end of a season comes players departing either for the NFL Draft or the transfer portal and it’s no different for Oregon State, resulting in the loss of multiple key contributors to either place.

“The theme is always about improvement spring ball wise and that’s no different from year one to year six. We have to improve and need guys to develop and get better,” said head coach Jonathan Smith on how the team plans to build on last season’s success. “Even the guys that are returning starters potentially have areas to take a step; we want to get better during the spring.”

One of the first steps to that improvement is replacing key contributors they lost, like starting tight end Luke Musgrave, who went to the NFL Draft along with defensive backs Alex Austin and Rejzohn Wright. Wright and Austin started at cornerback for the Beavers throughout the season before declaring for the NFL Draft, while Musgrave only started two games for the Beavers before being sidelined due to a knee injury.

The Beavers also lost starting inside linebacker Omar Speights and quarterbacks Chance Nolan and Tristan Gebbia to the transfer portal. Gebbia transferred to The Ohio State University and Speights transferred to Louisiana State University. Even with these losses, Smith and the coaching staff have been able to bring in players to help bolster the talent on the roster on both sides of the ball including a former five-star quarterback whose commitment to the Beavers is one of the highest ranked in school history.

Former Clemson quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei transferred to Oregon State after playing three years for the Tigers. Uiagalelei in his time at Clemson started for two years and filled in admirably at times for future No.1 overall pick Trevor Lawrence, but struggled this past season being benched in favor of his backup, Cade Klubnik, to start the Orange Bowl.

With the decision to hand the starting position to Klubnik going forward, Uiagalelei looked for a fresh start elsewhere.

“First of all, I think Clemson was a blessing. I thank all of the people there. I had great teammates, great coaches, great people around there. But ultimately, I wanted to go somewhere that they were going to maximize my talent as a quarterback. I wanted to go somewhere that was a little bit different,” Uiagalelei said of his decision to leave Clemson.

Uiagalelei also felt that coming to Oregon State would give him the best opportunity to succeed at the next level in the NFL. “It was a feeling. Before I put my name in, I felt like this was one of the places I really wanted to come to. I kind of knew that if it ended up putting itself on the table it was a great fit for me. I felt like this was the right place for me, where I wanted to grow as a quarterback,” Uiagalelei said, “It’s a pro-style offense and had everything I was looking for. I felt like Oregon State was the right place to go, so I appreciate them.”

Uiagalelei had scouted the Beavers offense